Samsung Dominates In Smartphones but Market Share is Falling

Samsung's market share is pretty much out of reach now, with its huge device range, but Apple's profits remain untouchable, even as the little guys start to crank up the sales.

Smothered Under a Samsung Product Blanket

The latest figures out of research firm IDC, plus the smartphone players own financials, suggest that the smartphone market has well and truly topped out, with high-end sales growth slowing. That's causing a couple of interesting quirks; as both Samsung and Apple with huge market share and profits, see their market share falling.

Despite Apple and Samsung's latest figures being huge, the Korean giant managed to disappoint investors as growth slowed. Both firms are seeing more sales of their older models, reducing profits. Between them, they shipped over 100 million smartphones (72 million for Samsung (an IDC estimate) and 31 million for Apple. Even so, now the smaller players are starting to pick up as interest wanes in the top two.

Room for the 'Little' Guys

That is leaving room for other players like LG who managed to sell over 12 million devices in the last quarter and Lenovo is also steaming up the rankings with heavy Asian sales. However, yet again there isn't the profit generation that analysts were expecting, certainly in LG's case.

Source: IDC

That leaves you wondering how the likes of BlackBerry with its next-generation A10 and LG's G2 devices will fare as high-end competition stalls. All of the analyst negativity is seeing share prices deflating quickly, and we wait to see what next-gen phone companion product is the one to set the stock prices rolling again.

Will it be Google's new Chromecast? Apple's iWatch or something out of left-field that has everyone else racing to catch up. Samsung is trying to build its own ecosystem, courting developers while the likes of Microsoft are scratching their heads wondering if the Surface RT tablet price cuts will help their ecosystem?

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